16 Jan
2014
16 Jan
'14
3:57 p.m.
Boeing Micromation? Anyway the computer generated micrographics shop in
Kent Washington in the late 70's/80's had 3M 715 COM machines, and one
huge Dec PDP of some kind. Perhaps it was a PDP-12. Anyway, they used
it to generate 35mm color microfilm, and some animation. We had a tech
office next to the guy that supported that machine,,, we supported the
3M machine, which had a PDP-8A running the 105 mm camera, character
generator, and a couple of tape drives.
Good memories, best company I ever worked for (3M).
On 01/15/2014 09:20 PM, Lyle Bickley wrote:
On Wed, 15 Jan 2014 19:59:01 -0800
Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote:
On 1/15/14 7:38 PM, Mark J. Blair wrote:
Indeed, I was a serious PDP-12 buff. I was the DECUS Coordinator
for
the PDP-12 for many years and owned one from about 1976 until I donated
it to the Computer History Museum in the mid-late 90's.
I bought mine directly from DEC (Blue Bell Office, PA) a couple of
months after they had been discontinued. DEC Blue Bell had been a
training center for the PDP-12 and had a huge collection of new Manuals
for the system. I bought it for $3,000 - and it included an ASR-33 and
RF08/RS08 disk (and appropriate DWO8/DM08 interfaces, etc.). I later
added a TC08 and another DECTape (TU-55) as well as a 9-track tape to
the system.
PDP-12s were used in medical labs, biology labs, used in psychological
studies, etc.
One of the really "fun" aspects of the PDP-12 is the fact that it can
switch from the LINC instruction set to the PDP-8 instruction set with
a single instruction in either mode.
The LINC instruction set has some very cool instructions that allow for
very interesting graphic displays in "real time".
You could run "DIAL" as the OS in LINC mode or OS/8 in PDP-8 mode.
Since I was the DECUS PDP-12 Coordinator I had the entire DECUS library
for the PDP-8 AND PDP-12. In addition, DEC offered me (and I gladly
took) the master copies of DIAL source code. As far as i know, they are
the only ones that exist. All of this software was donated with my
PDP-12 to the Computer History Museum.
Whoever acquires a PDP-12 will have a great system to restore and play
with ;)
Cheers,
Lyle one poster said that the PDP-12 was popular in
medical research.
That was me.
Use by medical research goes back all the way to the original LINC,
which was developed under an NIH grant.
Most medical schools and VA hospitals had them (LINC-8's or PDP-12's).
The last surplus one I saw for sale out here was at Weird Stuff a
LONG time ago (they were just moving out of the Milpitas location)
that came from the VA in Palo Alto.
It doesn't surprise me at all that there would be waveform generators
along with this machine since the 12 has built-in A/D's and D/A's.
Lyle Bickley may have some comments on this as well, since he was the
DECUS PDP-12 guy.